


Through the Storm and to the Shore

by sahiya



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal promised El that he'd save Peter, and he did. But that might not be enough to save the three of them. (SPOILERS for the end of S4.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for the following: disordered eating, depression, and major unhappiness. This is hurt/comfort, and I do bring the comfort, but there's a rather higher ratio of hurt-to-comfort than you all might be used to from me. But I don't believe in leaving my characters (or my readers) at the bottom of a pit without making sure they have a ladder, and the climb out is at least as interesting to me as the fall down.
> 
> Thanks to Fuzzyboo03 and Embroiderama for beta reading. The title is loosely taken from U2's "With or Without You." And thank you to Kanarek13, for this truly amazing piece of art:
> 
>  

_”You will fix this, Neal.”_

_“I will, El. I promise. I never meant -”_

_“No, you never do, do you? And it’s never your fault. But shit happens to you, Neal, and it’s the people standing next to you who get hurt. It’s _Peter_ who gets hurt.”_

_“El, please believe me, I would have -”_

_“Don’t, Neal. Don’t talk. Just listen to me. I don’t care what you have to do, what lines you have to cross. You will_ fix this _. Or God help me, I will never forgive you.”_

Neal wasn’t there when they let Peter out of prison, four weeks after Calloway had arrested him for murder, four weeks after El had charged Neal with getting him out. El went, with Jones to drive her. He and Diana were both at the office, being interrogated about the off-the-books investigation they’d been running for weeks. 

Neal was glad that there wasn’t much they had to hide at this point, because he was too tired to lie effectively if he’d had to. For four weeks, Neal had worked at the White Collar office during the day, playing nice with Calloway as though he wasn’t meeting with Jones and Diana and Mozzie at night, trying to figure out a way to bring her down. And then there were other meetings that even Mozzie didn’t know about. Paying off the right people to make sure that Peter was protected had taken time and skill, but there were risks that Neal wasn’t willing to take. Peter would walk out of prison and he’d do it in one piece. 

There had barely been a night in the last four weeks when Neal had slept more than three hours. Even when he’d had the opportunity, which had been only rarely, he’d found himself lying awake, hearing El’s words to him from the night Peter was arrested. He could be doing _something_ , he thought, instead of lying here. Something to fulfill his promise to her. He felt the same way every time Diana or Jones had made him take a break to eat something, every time Mozzie had brought takeout when he’d come. Food was a distraction. 

Now it was over. He was exhausted, his body at the end of its resources. But he needed to see Peter before he could rest. And he hoped . . . well, he’d fixed it. He _had_. And if El could forgive him, maybe they’d even let him back into their bed. Nothing sounded better to him right then than a night in Peter and Elizabeth’s bed. They’d put Peter in the middle and hold onto him, and everything would be okay again - would be the way it was. 

At last, he and Diana managed to convince the brass that no laws had been broken in the course of the investigation, and they let them go. Neal didn’t wait to talk to Diana, just grabbed his bag and bolted out the door, phone already in hand. 

Peter picked up on the second ring. “Hi Neal,” he said, conversationally, as though this wasn’t the first time they’d spoken in a month.

Neal was too exhausted to even think of being so casual about it. “Peter,” he said, and stopped right there in the middle of Federal Plaza and closed his eyes, feeling all the air rush out of him at once. “It’s so good to hear your voice.” 

“Yours, too,” Peter said, less casually now, in a soft tone that warmed Neal down to his toes. “I understand I have you to thank for everything.”

“Not just me,” Neal said. “Everyone pitched in.”

“But Jones said a lot of it was you. He said you’ve worked yourself into the ground the last few weeks. And I just wanted to say - thank you.”

Neal didn’t know what to say to that. He finally settled on, “I did what I had to,” then had to clear his throat. “Listen, I was just going to catch a cab over. Should I pick something up on the way? Takeout?” He couldn’t imagine that any of them would feel like cooking, but for the first time in weeks, Neal was hungry. _Starving_ , actually. 

Peter was quiet. “About that,” he said at last. “Would it be all right if you came tomorrow instead?” 

Neal’s insides went cold. “Tomorrow?” 

“For breakfast, maybe? I want to see you,” Peter added, “but I think El and I need some alone time tonight.”

Alone time. As in, time alone without the troublesome con man who’d wrecked their lives. Neal felt suddenly sick. “Yes, of course,” he managed, numbly. “Breakfast tomorrow. I’ll bring some of June’s coffee.”

“Oh God, yes, please bring some of June’s coffee,” Peter said. “Prison coffee was cruel _and_ unusual.”

“I remember,” Neal said, smiling despite himself. If Peter could joke about prison coffee, then he was okay. “I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah. Thanks for understanding, Neal.”

Neal hung up and then stood there with his phone in his hand. His smiled faded. Of course they hadn’t wanted him around tonight. He’d just been so eager to see Peter, to hold him, to see for himself that it had all come out all right, that he hadn’t stopped to think. But he’d see him tomorrow. Tomorrow was soon enough. 

Tomorrow wasn’t nearly soon enough. 

And what if it wasn’t just tonight? What if El had realized she couldn’t forgive him? That would be the end of what he’d had with the two of them. It might even be the end of his friendship with Peter. They’d go on working together, sure, but all the things that Neal loved about his life would disappear. 

His heart ached, imagining that future. But he had been an idiot to think that things could go back to how they were. Sometimes, once something was broken, it couldn’t be fixed. 

“Neal!”

He turned at the sound of Diana’s voice. She waved to him and jogged over as best she could in her heels. “Jones and I are going out to dinner to celebrate. You should come.”

Neal forced himself to smile. “Thanks, but I’m really tired. Think I’ll make it an early night.”

She frowned at him. “Are you sure? You look like you could use a good meal.”

Neal knew she was right, and only seconds ago he’d been starving, aware of every meal he’d skipped in the last month. Now the thought of food made him sick. “I’ll get some take-out,” he said. “You and Jones have a good time.”

“Okay,” she said, then stopped him as he turned away. “Hey. You did good, Caffrey.”

He managed a smile for her. “Thanks.” 

His apartment at June’s felt large and empty, disused. There was no food in the fridge, so he ate a handful of stale crackers from a box on the counter and poured himself a large glass of wine. His hands trembled, reminding him of how far he’d pushed himself in this. He didn’t know what else he could have done. Maybe there wasn’t anything. Maybe this was always where his relationship with El and Peter would have led, if not because of Pratt and Calloway then because of something else. His past was a minefield. Something would have blown up eventually.

Mozzie was right. Men like them didn’t get happy endings. 

He downed half the glass of wine far too quickly. He’d barely eaten anything all day - a piece of toast for breakfast and half a bag of chips out of a vending machine for lunch - and it hit his bloodstream immediately, making him lightheaded. He topped his glass off and stumbled out to the balcony, where he draped himself across one of the lounge chairs and looked up at the sky. He felt weird, as though he weren’t fully connected to his body. It wasn’t a terrible feeling, though he suspected he’d regret it come morning. 

But really, on the list of things Neal had to regret, too much wine on an empty stomach didn’t even rate. 

***

Peter hung up, then sat without looking at El, who was curled up beside him in the corner of the sofa. 

“Thank you,” El said quietly, after a long moment. 

Peter did look at her then. “That felt wrong, El.” She sighed. Peter kept going. “You heard Jones. No one worked harder to prove me innocent than Neal. He practically killed himself doing it.”

“And none of it would have been necessary at all if not for him,” she replied, with a sharp edge to her voice. 

“That’s not fair. James killed Pratt and let me take the fall. You know that Neal would never -”

“Stop, Peter,” she said. “Just _stop_.” Peter fell silent. She reached over to pour more wine into her empty glass. “I know that you’re right,” she said at last. “I know that it wasn’t Neal’s fault. It’s never Neal’s fault. But these things didn’t happen to us before you took his deal.” 

Peter reached for her hand. “El, what happened with the two of you while I was inside? I thought you and Neal would be there for each other.” 

El shook her head. “I just . . . I couldn’t do it, Peter. I couldn’t look him in the eye every day, I was too angry.” 

Peter squeezed her hand. “And now?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer. 

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. But, Peter, please,” she added, reaching for him. “I just got you back. I don’t want to talk about any of this right now, I just want to be with you. Please.” 

“Okay,” he said, because he wanted that, too. He didn’t want to argue now, when it was finally over and he could breathe again, could breathe and could touch El and not just speak to her through a pane of glass. They finished their wine and turned off the lights, and then they went upstairs. It had been four weeks - longer - since they made love. Peter didn’t think they’d ever gone so long. 

It was everything Peter had wished for when he’d been alone in his tiny prison cell with its rock-hard excuse for a bunk. Making love to El was like coming home, and if Peter hid his face in her hair and wept a little, then no one else would ever know. He might not have been able to do that if Neal were here, he admitted to himself. Or maybe he would have. Maybe he would have let the two of them cradle him between their bodies, El’s curves and Neal’s hard planes, the three of them fitting together as though they were made for it. They’d done that once with Neal, but never with Peter. 

He wondered now if he would ever have the chance. 

El fell asleep afterward. She was exhausted, Peter knew. They all were. Peter waited until she was truly asleep, then eased himself out from beneath her, tucking her into the warm bed. She sighed but didn’t wake. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and found his phone in the pocket of the jeans El had brought him to change into at the prison. He slipped out of the bedroom and went downstairs. It was late, but Peter didn’t think Neal would mind if he woke him up. 

“P’ter?” Neal answered groggily. 

Peter smiled. “Yeah, it’s me. Sorry to wake you.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s . . . it’s fine. Fell asleep on the balcony.”

“You fell asleep on the balcony?” Peter said, raising his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, me and the bottle of wine. Which I just knocked over. Dammit.”

Peter frowned. That wasn’t grogginess in Neal’s voice that he was hearing - or not _only_ grogginess. Neal was drunk. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Neal said. Which was not even close to the same as _yes_ , Peter thought. “Why’re you calling? Thought you’d be in bed with El by now.”

Peter suppressed a sigh. “I felt bad about earlier,” he said, and now, if possible, he felt worse about it. “It wasn’t fair to you after everything you’ve done for me. I know how hard you worked. You should’ve been here tonight.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Peter,” Neal said quietly. “And it’s okay. I get it.”

He sounded impossibly sad. Peter closed his eyes. He hadn’t given up on putting the pieces back together yet, but it sounded like he might be the only one. “Neal,” he said, very quietly, “I want you to know - no matter what happens, I love you. I haven’t said that enough, but just - no matter what, remember that, all right? If this - if _we_ -” Peter stopped, then decided to start over. “Nothing that happens will be because I don’t love you, you got that?”

Neal didn’t reply right away. When he did, it was with a faint sigh. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said. “It’s just true. And I thought . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I wanted to make sure you knew that.”

Neal was silent, briefly. “I love you, too,” he said at last. “But it’s late, and I should go to bed. And you should go back to El.”

“We’ll see you in the morning?” Peter asked, suddenly worried. 

“Yeah, you will.”

Peter hung up. He put his head in his hands. This wasn’t how he’d thought it would be. He’d hoped that El and Neal would be there for each other, and that their relationship would come out all the stronger for it. _What doesn’t kill you . . ._ But that wasn’t always true. Sometimes, what didn’t kill you just left you half-dead. Dying. 

El was awake when he came back upstairs. “Where’d you go?” she asked, watching him in the dim yellow light from the bedside lamp. 

For a moment, Peter hesitated. He could lie, he thought. He could tell her that he’d gone downstairs for a glass of water and to let Satchmo out. But he’d never wanted to be that man. He’d never wanted an _affair_. “I called Neal,” he said, climbing back into bed beside her. “I felt bad about what happened earlier.” El nodded but didn’t say anything. “Look,” he said, after a moment, “I know that things are rough between you two right now. But you haven’t seen each other in a while. Let’s just have breakfast tomorrow morning and see how things go.”

“I thought that was the plan all along,” El said, rolling over onto her side.

“Yeah,” Peter said with a sigh. “I guess so.” He put the light out and the two of them lay down, her back to his front, legs tangled together. He wrapped an arm around her and breathed in the scent of her hair. 

***

Neal woke the next morning with a throbbing head and a sick stomach. He almost fell over getting out of bed. Even the short walk to the bathroom left him exhausted and woozy, and he had to sit on the closed lid of the toilet with his head down for a while before he felt capable of standing again. He wanted nothing more than to crawl back into his bed and sleep, but he’d told Peter he’d come to Brooklyn for breakfast and he wasn’t going to bail on that because of a hangover. Finally feeling a little more stable, he downed two ibuprofen with a tall glass of water and got into the shower. By the time he was done in the shower, he still didn’t feel _well_ , but he did feel _better_. 

In his dressing room, he eyed his row of suits with longing. Peter would surely mock him for showing up to brunch in a suit, though, so instead he wore jeans and a button-down. He ate half a piece of dry toast and made a travel mug of tea for the cab ride. His hands trembled and he still wished he could just crawl back into bed, but he no longer felt in danger of actually passing out. 

So early on a Saturday, the trip to Brooklyn was fairly quick, even with a stop to pick up flowers for El. Neal sipped his tea, hoping it would clear his head and settle his stomach. It was half-successful, at least; when the cab let him off in front of the Burkes’ house, his head definitely felt less like it’d been stuffed full of cotton. But his stomach was a mess of butterflies and residual nausea, and he had no idea how he was supposed to eat Eggs Benedict or El’s brioche French toast while feeling like this. 

Then Peter opened the front door and nothing else mattered. 

Neal had a pound of June’s Italian roast and the flowers in his hands, and he had to drop them both onto the table in the foyer before he could touch Peter. But then his hands were free and he was, finally, hugging Peter. He was almost glad, then, that he hadn’t been able to go with Jones and El to the prison, because he would not have been able to have this there. He would have had to restrain himself to the back-slapping sort of hug that straight men gave each other; he could not have embraced his lover. And he certainly couldn’t have kissed him. 

Neal had been a little afraid that Peter wouldn’t let him kiss him, that he’d tell him they should hold off until they’d worked everything out. But he kissed Peter and Peter kissed him back, his hands warm on Neal’s hips. Neal pushed his fingers into Peter’s hair. It was longer than he usually wore it. 

If Neal had had his way, he’d have pushed Peter down onto the floor right there in the foyer. But he was conscious that El was around here somewhere, maybe even as close as the kitchen, and so eventually he pulled away. Peter didn’t let him go far, though. He pulled Neal back against his shoulder. Neal pressed his forehead into Peter’s neck and breathed in and out. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said. 

Peter gave a shaky laugh. “Me, too.”

Neal pulled away, just a few inches. “Where’s El?” 

“At the store, we were out of a few things. She should be back in a couple minutes.” Peter rested his forehead against Neal’s. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to do this yesterday.”

“It’s okay,” Neal said, managing a smile and hoping it didn’t look as broken as it felt. It was hard to lie to Peter like this. 

Peter looked like he might argue, but in the end he didn’t. He just nodded and pulled away, and Neal retrieved the flowers and the coffee from the table. In the kitchen, Peter went about making the coffee, while Neal found a vase, filled it with water, and started cutting the ends off the flowers to arrange them more to his liking. 

Neal tried to relax into the quiet domesticity of it. But after a minute or two, he became aware that Peter was watching him and frowning. “What?” 

Peter blinked. “Sorry. It’s just, Jones said that you’d worked yourself into the ground, proving my innocence. But I didn’t realize . . . Neal, you -”

The front door opened and closed. “Peter?” El called. 

Neal froze. “We’re in the kitchen, El,” Peter replied.

El entered in a rustle of shopping bags. She’d lost weight in the month since Neal had seen her last, Neal noticed. She was thinner in the face, and it didn’t necessarily suit her. “Hi, El,” he said.

“Hello, Neal,” she replied. She glanced at Peter. “There are a couple more bags in the car, hon. Would you mind getting them? I’m parked down toward Lytton.”

“Of course,” Peter said. He took the keys from her and gave her a kiss in passing. He looked over his shoulder on the way out, giving Neal what he suspected was meant to be a reassuring glance.

El and Neal looked at each other. Neal drew a deep breath. “El, I’m so -”

“Don’t, Neal,” El said. Neal stopped. “I know you’re sorry. And I know how hard you worked.”

Neal shook his head. “It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” El said. “Anyone would know that just by looking at you. Have you eaten or slept at all in the last four weeks?”

Neal didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m okay.”

El sighed. “You’re not okay,” she said. “Neither am I. Ironically,” she added, starting to unpack the shopping bags, “I think Peter might be doing the best out of the three of us.”

“He’s . . .” Neal stopped. “He seems okay to you?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the counter briefly. “Yes,” she said. “I was so scared for him. But he seems okay to me.” She looked at Neal. “You had a hand in that, too, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. Neal shrugged, glancing away. “Well, thank you, for whatever it is you did. It worked.”

“Don’t thank me, El,” Neal said, shaking his head. 

“But I _am_ thankful, Neal,” she said, looking at him. “I’m thankful for everything you did for Peter. If I weren’t, you wouldn’t be here.” Neal nodded, knowing it was true. Her gratitude and Peter’s determination were the only things holding them together at this point. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t nearly enough. 

The two of them looked at each other. Neal didn’t know what El was thinking, but he was aware of every foot of empty space that separated them and of how unable he was to cross it, even the slightest bit. 

“Peter wants to have brunch,” El said at last. “He wants something normal. I think we can give him that for an hour, don’t you?”

Neal nodded. “Yes.” An hour of pretending that everything was fine. He could give Peter that, if that was what he wanted. 

“Good,” El said, and handed him a pineapple to slice up. 

Making brunch together was actually quite peaceful, if not as playful as it had been the handful of times they’d done it after Neal had stayed the night. Neal cut up fruit and scrambled eggs while El flipped pancakes. Peter helped mostly by stealing fruit off the plate until Neal rapped his knuckles. Peter laughed and Neal smiled, but El, he noticed, did neither. 

Eating brunch was less pleasant, unfortunately. Despite their best efforts, conversation was strained. To make matters worse, Neal’s stomach had never really settled that morning. He didn’t know if it was his lingering hangover or just nerves, but he spent most of breakfast moving food around on his plate and slipping bits of it to Satchmo. What little he did eat sat uncomfortably in his stomach. The bitter coffee and acidic orange juice didn’t help, and by the time Peter and El were done eating, Neal found himself breathing through his nose to try and quell the nausea. 

“You okay?” Peter asked, as they stood at the kitchen sink, loading the dishwasher and washing the pans. “You look sort of pale.”

“I’m fine. I just - I’ll be right back.” Neal dropped the sponge he was holding into the sink and hurried out. He made it upstairs to the bathroom just in time to shut himself in, drop to his knees in front of the toilet, and throw up everything he’d just eaten. 

Which admittedly wasn’t much. The vomiting quickly turned to dry heaves and then, thankfully, stopped. Neal slumped over, head resting on his arm, and reached up to flush the toilet. He was so tired. He’d slept the night before, slept _well_ , even, but he was so tired. And he didn’t think he could blame it all on his hangover.

There was a knock at the door. “Neal?” Peter said. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Neal said, sitting back from the toilet to lean against the tub. 

Peter sat on the edge of the tub. Neal let his head rest against his leg and closed his eyes. “‘m okay, really,” he mumbled. 

“Evidence would indicate otherwise,” Peter said. He stroked a hand through Neal’s hair, then rubbed the pressure point at the base of his skull. Neal sighed as it relieved just a little bit of his headache. “You hungover?”

“Yeah,” Neal admitted. “And it was just . . . it was a lot of food. I haven’t really been eating.”

“No kidding,” Peter said. “You’ve lost a lot of weight since I went inside. And I’m not sure where a guy like you loses it _from_.”

“I’ll be okay,” Neal said. “Now that everything’s over.”

“Maybe try not replacing food with wine.”

Neal smiled weakly. “Yeah. That was stupid of me.” He’d known how badly it would turn out, too. He just hadn’t cared at the time.

Peter was silent for a moment. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this today,” he said. “Maybe we should wait until you’re feeling better.”

Neal didn’t have to ask what _this_ was. “No, Peter,” he said, sitting up. “I can’t - I can’t stand not knowing. I’m okay, I swear.”

Peter didn’t look like he believed him at all, and Neal supposed he couldn’t blame him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Neal said, as firmly as possible. “Just - give me a minute, okay?”

Peter nodded. “Okay.”

He left Neal alone in the bathroom. Neal pushed himself up, pleased when the room didn’t waver, and went to the sink. He poured himself a lid’s worth of Peter’s mint-flavored mouthwash, swished it around in his mouth, then spit it out. He splashed some water on his face, too, and patted it dry with a hand towel. Then he stopped, catching his own eye in the mirror. 

Jesus. He really looked terrible. No wonder everyone kept trying to feed him. Face too thin, eyes too shadowed. Even his _hair_ looked tired, and Neal hadn’t thought that was possible. He blinked at himself, then turned away, hand finding the light switch on his way out. He’d be fine. A few good meals, a few nights of actual rest, and he’d be fine. 

***

El occupied herself putting the last of the brunch food away while Peter was upstairs checking on Neal, and then, when they still hadn’t reappeared, with making tea. She put two mugs on the coffee table and curled up with her own in a corner of the sofa. 

This was going to be terrible, she thought. It was going to be terrible, and she was the one putting them through it. If she could just get past everything - if she could just _know_ that nothing like this would ever happen again - but that was impossible. Neal was Neal. No one could make her that promise, not and mean it. Maybe in a few months she would feel differently. When she wasn’t still trying to recover from a month’s worth of nights alone in her and Peter’s bed, from speaking to him through bullet-proof glass once a week and wondering if this was going to be the rest of her life. Maybe then she’d be able to trust Neal the way she once had.

She had a hard time imagining that future. 

Neal would understand, or at least he wouldn’t argue. That much had been clear to her from the beginning. But El was less sure about Peter. He hadn’t understood yesterday, when she hadn’t wanted Neal to come straight over. He’d done what she’d asked, but he hadn’t really understood. But they were a package deal, she and Peter had agreed from the very beginning. If she wanted out, then she took him with her. She wasn’t just making the decision for herself, she was making it for all of them, and that made her feel selfish and mean. But she couldn’t be in a relationship with Neal Caffrey - definitely not right now, and maybe not ever again. 

Peter came downstairs. “He’s just pulling himself together,” he reported. He sat down on the couch beside her and picked up a mug, sniffed it. “Ginger?” El nodded. Peter sipped, then sighed. “He looks terrible, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” El agreed. “He does.” Which only made her feel worse for what she was about to do. She wondered if she ought to warn him, and drew breath to do so. But then she heard Neal’s footsteps on the stairs and stopped. 

He was rumpled and pale when he entered - more pale than he had been before breakfast, and that was saying something. He didn’t look strong enough to be having this conversation, but El knew that neither of them wanted to put it off any longer. 

“Sorry,” Neal said with an embarrassed grimace. He folded himself up to sit on the floor by the coffee table. Satchmo wandered over and flopped down, laying his head on Neal’s knee. Neal rubbed his ears idly.

“Have some tea,” Peter told him, passing him a mug. “It’s ginger, it’ll help your stomach.”

“Thanks.” Neal took the mug.

None of them spoke. El gripped her mug. She should just say it, she knew, but the words stuck in her throat. This wasn’t fair to any of them, she thought, least of all to Neal, whose fault none of this had really been. But she didn’t know what else she could do. They had to be honest with each other, they’d said so from the beginning. 

She sucked in a breath. Peter and Neal both looked at her. “I can’t do this,” she said. 

Neal nodded, dropping his gaze down to his mug. Peter, for all that he must have seen something like this coming, looked almost panicked. “Can’t do what?” Peter asked, reaching for her hand. “Hon, I don’t - what does that mean? Can’t do what? Can’t do -” his voice cracked “- _us_?”

“No,” Neal said, before El could reply. “Not you. Me.”

Peter looked to her for confirmation. She nodded. “Maybe - maybe not forever,” she said, mostly because Peter looked absolutely crushed and Neal looked worse. This was harder than she’d thought it would be. “But I need some time.”

Neal set his mug of tea on the table. “I should go.”

“Neal, wait,” Peter said.

Neal shook his head. “I’ll see you in the office on Monday.” 

He shifted Satch’s head off his knee and stood. Peter followed him into the foyer. El stayed where she was, curled up in the corner of the sofa. She could hear them, even though they kept their voices low. 

”Neal -” 

“Please, Peter. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” 

“No, just . . . remember what I said on the phone last night, okay? It’s - it’s still true.” 

“Yeah, me too. I’ll see you Monday.” The front door opened and closed, and Neal was gone. 

Peter came back but didn’t sit down, didn’t join her on the sofa. He didn’t speak, either. El suppressed the urge to tell him she was sorry. She didn’t have anything to be sorry about, damn it. She had the right to do this. 

Instead she said, “This can’t be that surprising to you.”

“It’s not,” he said, still not looking at her. “But I thought - I didn’t think this would just be _it_. I thought we were going to talk. I thought we’d work it out.”

El sighed. “This isn’t something that can be fixed with an apology. I know Neal is sorry. That isn’t the point.”

“Then what -”

“You went to _prison_ , Peter,” she said, uncurling herself to frown at him. “You were there for a month. And I didn’t know if I’d ever get you back.”

“That wasn’t -”

“- Neal’s fault,” she finished. “I know. And you know what?” she added, standing. “I don’t care. I _don’t care_ that it wasn’t his fault. It wouldn’t have happened to you if not for him, just like the U-boat and the car accident and almost getting fired five times over wouldn’t have happened to you if not for him. Just like me getting kidnapped wouldn’t have happened if not for him.” Peter didn’t answer. El looked away, covering her mouth with her hand. “I just want our life back, Peter,” she said at last, voice cracking. “I just want things to be like they were.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Peter said flatly. “Even if Neal’s no longer part of us, I’m still going to be working with him at the office. The only way we could really go back would be if I sent him back to prison, and I won’t, El. I won’t do that. Please don’t ask me to.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said, though she had thought about it, in the dark of night, in their half-empty bed. She’d thought about telling Peter, _Him or me_ and really meaning it. She’d realized then that she wasn’t entirely sure what Peter would do. She thought he’d still choose her, but maybe not if she pushed him that far. “But I can’t. I just _can’t_. Please, can you understand that?”

Peter nodded. “Yeah.” But when she stepped toward him, to touch him, he shook his head. “I need some air,” he said, and went outside. Satchmo followed him, tail wagging.

El sat back down on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. All she’d wanted was to save the life she’d loved for so long. Now she wondered if she hadn’t just destroyed it.

***

Neal had always been the sort to hole up and lick his wounds in isolation. He spent the next twenty-four hours doing exactly that. He didn’t answer the door when June knocked. He didn’t answer the phone when Peter called. At noon on Sunday, he got a text from Peter that just said, _Please let me know you’re all right._ That, he did answer, with two words: _I’m fine._

He supposed it didn’t count as a lie if they both knew it wasn’t true. 

Mozzie showed up Sunday evening and didn’t wait for him to answer the door before he let himself in. Neal was lying on one of the chaise lounges on the balcony. Despite having told Peter he’d try not to replace food with wine anymore, there was a half empty bottle beside him. He heard Mozzie come in, set some things down on the table - takeout, he suspected, by the rustle of the bags - and then come out to the balcony.

“Drinking alone?” Moz said. “That’s not like you.”

“I hear it’s traditional when you’ve been dumped,” Neal said, not looking at him. Moz was the only person he could tell, after all. The only person who’d known.

“Ah.” Moz was quiet for a moment. “Elizabeth?”

“Yeah.” Neal forced himself to sit up. 

Moz sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Neal shrugged. “You were right,” he said, numbly. “People like them aren’t for people like us. I should’ve listened.”

“The Suit wouldn’t revoke your deal, though, would he?” Moz asked. “Because if he might, then we should be packing.”

Neal shook his head. “No. Peter won’t do that. He’s not happy about the situation.” A cold sort of comfort, really. Peter and El still had each other, after all. And tomorrow morning, Neal would have to see Peter, would have to pretend that nothing had happened. Neal had pulled a lot of cons in his life, but he thought this might be his greatest challenge yet. All the more so because he looked forward to it with no pleasure at all. 

“I brought Thai food,” Moz said after a moment.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neal,” Moz said, and went to sit on the edge of the lounge chair, “you have to eat.”

“I had dinner already,” Neal lied. 

Moz gave him a disbelieving look. Neal shrugged. 

“It’ll get better,” Moz said after a long silence. “You know it will.”

“Yeah,” Neal said, leaning back again and closing his eyes. “It’ll get better.”


	2. Chapter 2

Monday morning came far too soon. Neal woke feeling terrible, though no worse, really, than he had the day before. He showered, dressed in his favorite suit, and drank a cup of coffee with half a piece of buttered toast. He thought about calling in sick - it wouldn’t have been that far from the truth - but he knew it wouldn’t help. Peter might even come and check on him, and then not only would Neal have to see him, they’d be alone. Better to deal with it in the office, where there were other people around and plenty of distraction. 

It was a little after eight by the time Neal managed to drag himself into the office, and Peter was already there. Neal didn’t go up to his office as he normally would have, just sat down at his desk and tried to remember what he’d been working on last week before Peter’s case had broken open. 

“Hey, Neal,” Jones said, passing by. “You have a good weekend?”

Neal shrugged. “It was quiet.”

Jones nodded. “Quiet’s good. How’re you feeling? Peter said you were under the weather.”

Neal frowned. “He did? When?”

“Last night. Diana and I went out to dinner with him and El. He mentioned you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh,” Neal said. “Yeah, I’m okay.” That stung. Was he not going to be invited along to team dinners anymore? Or maybe only if Elizabeth wasn’t going to be there. Neal ducked his head, hiding his face and hoping Jones didn’t notice. 

“Hey, you hungry?” Jones asked. “The coffee shop messed up my order this morning, so I have an extra Danish and a vanilla latte. Want them?”

That was a thinly veiled ploy if Neal had ever heard one. But it was also very thoughtful of Jones, so he said, “Sure. Thanks.”

The Danish was too sweet for him, but Neal picked at it over the next hour. He’d managed to eat about a third by the time everyone started making their way up to the conference room for the nine o’clock meeting. He put it back in its bag and stuck it in his desk drawer but took the coffee along. 

Peter had clearly put it around that he didn’t want any special acknowledgment at the meeting, so things were, as much as possible, business as usual. Neal sat in the back. He’d always enjoyed watching Peter run meetings before; competence and intelligence were sexy and team meetings gave Peter the chance to display both. He often called on Neal to contribute or even present part of whatever case they were working on, and Neal had liked that, too. But not today. Today, Peter let Neal stay quiet, only calling on him once.

The meeting ended promptly at ten. Neal stood to leave, hoping to escape without actually having to interact with Peter at all. 

No such luck. “Neal, my office,” Peter said, even as he was surrounded by people who wanted to welcome him back. Neal sighed and went into Peter’s office. He sat in front of Peter’s desk, back to the bullpen, and waited. 

It was nearly ten minutes before Peter came in. He dropped the stack of files he’d taken into the meeting onto his desk and sat down. Neal could feel him looking at him, but he kept his eyes trained on Peter’s Quantico diploma, just over and above Peter’s right shoulder. It was better than looking at the no fewer than three photos of El or Peter with El that Peter kept on his desk. 

Peter cleared his throat. “You all right?”

Neal still didn’t look at him. “I’m fine, Peter, why do you ask?”

Peter sighed. “Neal, please. Don’t do this.”

Neal finally looked him in the eye. “No. I’m not.”

Peter rubbed a hand over his face. “Me neither. Look . . . I think we’d better just keep our distance for a while. You and Diana and Jones do well together. I’m going to step back for a bit.”

“Yeah,” Neal said, dully. “Probably better.” And under the circumstances, no one would really think it all that strange. “Am I supposed to be sick every time there’s a team dinner?” 

This time it was Peter who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry about that. But I didn’t think you’d want to come. And El . . .”

“Yeah,” Neal said. “It’s fine.” He stood. 

“No,” Peter said, looking up at him. “None of this is fine. And I’m sorry, Neal. I really am. Next time we do a team dinner, I’ll tell El she has to sit it out.”

Neal shrugged. “You don’t have to. Anything else?”

Peter frowned. “Did you get some rest this weekend? You still look exhausted.”

Neal shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you later.” He left without giving Peter any chance to call him back. 

Neal didn’t know what Peter said to Diana and Jones about the whole situation, but he became aware, over the next few days, that the two of them were looking after him. The next morning, the Danish and coffee were already waiting for Neal on his desk when he came in, and at twelve-thirty, Diana forced him to go to lunch with her, standing by Neal’s desk with her arms crossed over her chest until he finally agreed. She and Jones took turns after that, making sure he left the office at lunch time, making sure that he actually ate something. His appetite seemed to have fled entirely. Most days, Neal couldn’t manage much, but he usually did better than the nothing he’d have managed if left to his own devices. It was enough to keep him going from one day to the next.

At home, June started inviting him to dinner - not every night, but most. More often, certainly, than she used to. It was possible that Mozzie had said something to her or that she’d noticed on her own that Neal wasn’t eating, but Neal thought it was most likely that Peter had called her and asked her to keep an eye on him. He thought that idea should have bothered him, but it didn’t. It made him feel just a little better to know that even if they weren’t really speaking, Peter was still finding ways to take care of him. It made him think that Peter had probably been telling the truth when he’d told Neal he still loved him, and that made things just slightly more bearable. 

No one actually said anything to him about the situation with him and Peter, for which Neal was grateful. He didn’t think he could have stood to talk about it, especially since he’d have had to lie. He was still sleeping badly - no nightmares, just terrible insomnia that nothing seemed to fix - and he was exhausted all the time. The worst part of that wasn’t the lack of concentration - though that was starting to effect his work - but the way his emotions felt so close to the surface all the time. It made it hard to smile when he didn’t feel like it, which was most of the time, and it made it even harder to dissemble the way he always had. Lying took energy, if only to remember which lies you’d told which people. 

All of this meant that Neal wasn’t covering as well as he should have. He supposed it was inevitable that someone would say something eventually; it was really only a surprise that it took as long as it did. Three weeks after Peter came back, he had the team over to the house for a barbecue. He actually asked Neal if he wanted to come this time, and if the dinner had been at a restaurant, he might have said yes. But he didn’t think he could handle going to the house, with all the memories it held, and so he declined. 

It was Friday evening. June had gone to visit her daughter for the week, and Mozzie was off somewhere, doing something that Neal was probably better off not knowing about. Neal sat at his dining table with the balcony doors wide open and a full glass of wine in front of him. He’d decided to spend the evening wallowing. He didn’t allow himself the luxury very often - sometimes he was afraid that if he started, he’d never stop. But goddammit, he _hurt_. He hadn’t hurt this much since Kate had died. It was so hard to see Peter everyday, to know that it wasn’t over, not really, and to not be able to do a damn thing about it. He wanted Peter and El back, but if he couldn’t have them, then he just wanted this horrible feeling to go away, to be able to look at Peter again without feeling this hollowed-out ache in his chest. 

By the time full dark had fallen, Neal had finished most of the bottle. He hadn’t had any dinner, there being no one around to make him eat, and he was pretty drunk. He was just tipping the last of it into his glass when someone knocked at the door. 

Neal went very still. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and there was no one he wanted to see him like this: drunk, depressed, tear-stained. The maid had probably already told whoever it was that he was home, but if he didn’t answer, perhaps they’d think he was asleep. Or maybe just take the hint. 

“Caffrey, open the door,” Diana’s voice said. “I know you’re in there, don’t bother hiding.”

Neal sighed. Diana. Perfect. He got to his feet, rubbed a hand over his face - probably just smearing tears and snot everywhere, but he was past caring - and went to open the door. 

“Jesus, Caffrey,” Diana said, upon seeing him. “Who died?” Then, apparently hearing herself, her eyes widened. “Wait, no one actually died, right?”

“No,” Neal said, wearily. “Look, Diana, I’m really tired. Do you think whatever this is could wait?”

“No,” Diana said, and pushed past him into the apartment. Neal saw her take in the empty bottle of wine and the full glass on the table. 

“Would you like something?” Neal asked, automatically. 

“Sure,” Diana said. “I’ll take that -” she pointed at the glass of wine “- because you’re going to be drinking the tea I’m about to make you. _Sit_ , Caffrey.” Neal opened his mouth to protest, but Diana cut him off. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

Neal sat, leaning forward to put his face in his hands. He listened to Diana doing things in his kitchenette, then going over to close the balcony doors. After a couple minutes, a mug of tea - thankfully not ginger - appeared next to his elbow. Diana sat down next to him with his glass of wine. Neal sat up and wrapped his hands around the mug. It was shockingly warm in his hands, and he was suddenly aware of how cold it was in the apartment. It wasn’t summer anymore, not really, and the nights were getting chilly. 

“Okay,” Diana said. “Tell me what’s going on with you and Peter.” Neal started to open his mouth, but Diana beat him to it. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ Whatever’s going on, it’s been a problem since Peter came back. It’s affecting the team and I have the right to know. So spill.”

Neal was quiet, trying to find two brain cells to rub together. There had to be a version he could tell her that was close enough to the truth to satisfy her, but which wouldn’t immediately land Peter _back_ in prison. “Elizabeth is angry with me,” he said at last.

Diana sat back. “Oh. She blames you for Peter getting arrested, or . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Neal said with a shrug. “Well, no, not really, I guess. She says she knows it wasn’t my fault, and she knows I’m sorry it happened. But none of that really makes a difference. So I guess she and I aren’t speaking. Or at least, we haven’t seen each other in a while, and I don’t know what would happen if we did.” He wondered, not for the first time, if the only thing that would really get El to forgive him would be if he sent himself back to prison. Locked himself up where he couldn’t hurt Peter anymore and gave her back the life she’d had before. 

It said something about how terrible everything had become that doing exactly that was starting to seem like a reasonable option. Neal didn’t want to go back to prison, but it might be safer for everyone if he did. 

“Okay,” Diana said slowly. “I get that. It explains why you didn’t come tonight. But even in the office, you and Peter barely talk anymore.”

Neal shrugged. “Easier for him, I guess.”

“But it’s not, Neal,” Diana said, in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “I guess you probably don’t see it, but this is making him miserable, too.”

Perversely, that made Neal feel a little bit better. At least he wasn’t alone in his misery. Still, he sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to do about it. There isn’t anything I _can_ do.”

“You could talk to Peter,” she said. 

Neal shook his head. “Nothing left to say.” 

“Well, you can’t keep doing _this_ ,” Diana said. “Getting drunk in the dark and crying. Jesus, Caffrey, it’s like you got dum - _oh my God._ ” She stared at him. Neal tried not to hunch guiltily, but he was out of places to hide. Diana snapped her mouth shut audibly, then took a long swallow of wine. 

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Neal said quietly. 

Diana looked at him hard. “Swear to me that it was consensual. That you weren’t coerced.”

“Of course it was consensual,” Neal said, appalled. “Diana -”

“I had to ask. With you being on the anklet, I had to ask.” She took a deep breath. “So. That explains a lot.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Neal shook his head. “You and Jones have been great. I really appreciate it. Just please don’t tell anyone, all right? It’s over now, anyway. Peter and I will get through this. It’s just going to take a while.”

Diana nodded. “Okay. And if you ever want to talk -”

Neal nodded. “Thanks.”

She left soon after, pouring the remainder of the glass of wine down the sink on her way out. Neal could’ve opened another bottle - God knew he had enough of them - but instead he got ready for bed and drank a tall glass of water with two ibuprofen. He climbed into bed, feeling like he might actually be able to sleep for once. 

His phone buzzed on the bedside table. Neal fumbled for it, wondering who could be texting him at this hour. 

It was Peter. _I miss you_. 

Neal’s throat tightened. He wondered if Peter was also a little bit drunk right now. He didn’t think he would have ever sent that text otherwise.

There was a high road and a low road to be taken here. Peter was offering him the chance to take the low road. It wouldn’t be hard for Peter and Neal to pick up again, to hide their relationship from El. Peter often worked late nights. It would feel so much better, for a little while at least, and El would probably never know.

But Neal and Peter would know. Peter would hate himself for it, and even if he wouldn’t, Neal wasn’t sure he could do it. El and Peter were so much more than the sum of their parts. As much as he loved each of them separately, he loved them together best of all. He’d never, ever wanted to be the man who wrecked them. He’d never wanted to steal either of them away from the other. He didn’t want a forgery of what they had. If he couldn’t have the real thing, then he’d rather have nothing at all. 

_Good night, Peter_ , he wrote, and turned his phone off.

***

_Good night, Peter._

Peter looked at his phone in his hand and knew the gentle rebuke for what it was. It was for the best, he supposed. It had just been a difficult evening, with Neal’s absence so palpable, and he’d had too much to drink. After Diana and Jones had left, he’d grabbed another beer - his fifth - and come out to the back porch. Just him, his beer, and his phone. 

The back door opened. “I thought I’d find you out here,” El said. 

“Yeah,” Peter said, turning his face away. She came out and sat down in the other chair. Peter heard her pop the cap on a beer of her own and take her first sip. Neither of them spoke, and the silence stretched between them. 

There’d been a lot of silences the last three weeks. It was not so much that they weren’t speaking, Peter thought, as that neither of them really knew what to say to the other. He had no idea what El wasn’t saying to him, but for his part, he didn’t know how to talk to her about it in a way that didn’t make it sound like he was asking for more than she was willing to give. And so he said nothing, and the silences grew.

“I wish it didn’t have to be like this,” El said at last. “But I just want you to be safe. Does that make me such a horrible person?”

“This isn’t keeping me safe, El,” Peter said, refusing to look at her. He looked at the label on his beer bottle instead and started peeling it off. “This isn’t like when you asked Neal to lie to me, and you know it.” He took long swig from his beer. “Be honest. Is this making you feel better?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I could ever feel better while you’re so angry at me.”

“I’m not angry,” Peter said, finally looking at her. “I’m _sad_ , El. I’m really, really sad. And I’m allowed to be. I’m allowed to grieve.”

“I love him, too, you know,” El said. “And I do miss him.”

Peter took another long swig. “All you have to do is say the word.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No,” Peter said, sitting up. “Do you know what isn’t fair? What isn’t fair is seeing him every day and barely being able to talk to him, and never, _ever_ being allowed to touch him. I used to touch him all the time, El, even before we were us. And now I hardly let myself come within five feet of him. He’s so miserable, and I have to watch it every day and I can’t do a damn thing about it. We are breaking his heart, and it’s breaking mine. That, _that_ is what isn’t fair.”

“What do you want from me, Peter?” El asked, sounding angry herself for the first time. “I had the right to do what I did. _Any_ of us would’ve had that right. What do you want me to say?”

His beer was empty. Peter set it down too hard on the table. “I don’t know. But Neal and I can’t keep going like this. We can’t.” His voice cracked, and he covered his face with his hand. “It’s awful, El. It’s just . . . it’s awful.”

“Oh honey,” El said softly. She got up and squeezed in next to him in the chair. Peter let her, turned his face into her hair. “Do you think - what if . . .” She swallowed. Peter pulled away and looked at her. “What if the two of you . . . ?” She trailed off, looking at him. 

Peter’s mouth felt dry. “But - we always said we were a package deal. Both of us or none at all.”

“I know, hon. But it’s making you so unhappy,” she said, reaching up to stroke her thumb over his cheek, smearing the dampness she found there. 

Peter hesitated. “Would you be okay with it?” 

Her hand faltered. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Would you?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said. “I don’t know if Neal would be, either.” And if they tried, only for one of them to balk and call an end to it? That would be worse than never trying at all, Peter suspected. “I don’t know, El.” He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead on El’s shoulder. “I wish we’d never started any of this.”

Her hand came up to cradle the back of his head. “Do you really mean that?”

Peter was quiet. He wasn’t sure he did. Those few months that the three of them had been together after Neal had returned from Cape Verde had been amazing. The memories hurt now, but someday, he thought he would be glad to have them. But he didn’t know if Neal would ever feel the same. “I’m worried about him, El,” he said, in lieu of a real answer. “You know how thin he was when I first got out?” He felt El nod. “He’s not much better. I’ve been having Diana and Jones take him to lunch every day, but they say he’s still not eating. And he looks so tired.”

El was quiet. “I don’t think I realized,” she said. Peter looked at her, puzzled, and she shook her head. “I didn’t realize how much harder this would be on the two of you.”

Peter sighed. The brief flare of anger he’d felt toward her was gone now, replaced by more of the bone-deep sadness he’d been carrying around with him for three weeks, but he still didn’t know what to say to her about it. “Neal and I, we’ll get through it,” he said at last. After all, they really had no choice.

The two of them were quiet for a long time. At last, El slid off the chair and stood. “Come on,” she said, holding her hand out to him. “Let’s go to bed.”

He took her hand and followed her upstairs. 

The rest of the weekend passed quietly. Things felt just a little bit easier between the two of them, even if nothing had been resolved. Neither of them mentioned El’s suggestion again. It wasn’t a long-term solution, Peter thought. If El were certain that at some point she’d be ready to be with Neal again, it might work. But that was by no means guaranteed, and delaying the inevitable wouldn’t help anyone.

Peter’s phone rang on Sunday afternoon, while he was helping El in the garden. He glanced at the caller ID and saw, to his trepidation, that it was ADC Bancroft. He wiped his hands on his already grubby jeans and answered. “Hello, sir,” he said. El, who was weeding one of the flower beds, sat back and looked at him. 

“Good afternoon, Agent Burke. I’m sorry to call you at home on a Sunday, but I wanted to give you a heads up about something that’s coming down the line tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Peter said, his worry ratcheting up a notch. 

“As you probably know, there’s a full-blown grand jury investigation on to try and understand the extent of Pratt’s corruption and who else might be involved. You’re going to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation.”

“Ah,” Peter said, not sure whether he should be relieved or even more worried. “That makes sense, I guess. Just me?”

“Agent Barrigan, as well.”

“Not Agent Jones?”

“Not yet. It seems he’s a bit lower down their list. Normally they’d subpoena Caffrey, too, but they’re worried about the admissibility of any testimony he might give.”

“Right,” Peter said with a sigh. That was the same reason Neal very rarely testified in court. 

“I just want to be clear, Burke, that _you_ are not under investigation in this. All the same, I suggest that you and Barrigan both retain counsel. You’ll be asked to give your deposition in D.C. at the end of this coming week.”

“The end of this week?” Peter repeated, eyebrows raised. “That’s fast.”

“They want to get this over with,” Bancroft said. “It’s embarrassing for a lot of people, and it’s only likely to get more so. But it shouldn’t take more than two or three days.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “Thank you for the advance warning, sir. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Take care.”

Bancroft hung up. Peter turned back to El, who at some point in the conversation had left the flower bed and gone to pour herself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher on the table. “What’s going on?” she asked. 

Peter poured himself his own glass of iced tea and sat down. He told her what Bancroft had said, finishing with, “He was careful to make sure I knew that I wasn’t under investigation, but he said I should bring a lawyer anyway. I’ll call Greg tomorrow and see if he can send an associate with me.”

“Send?” El said. “They’re not doing it here?”

Peter shook his head. “D.C., Bancroft said.”

“For how long?” El asked, not looking happy. 

“Couple of days. I’ll be back by the weekend.” That didn’t seem to help. “Unless you want to come with me,” Peter added. “I’ll be tied up all day, but -”

“No,” El said, shaking her head. “No, I’m still catching up at work. I can’t take any time off. Anyway, I’m just . . . being silly.” She took a long swallow of iced tea. “Two days, you said?”

“Maybe three,” Peter said. “But I’ll try and be back Friday night.”

“You’d better be,” she said, but the flirtation felt forced, and when Peter glanced over at her, she wasn’t smiling. He supposed he hadn’t been back all that long; it was natural for her to feel ambivalent about him leaving again so soon, even if it was only for a couple of days. And he’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t nervous, despite Bancroft’s assurances. With the evidence box in FBI custody, they had plenty that pointed to both Pratt and Bennett’s corruption, but that didn’t mean no one would trot out anything that might be damaging to Peter.

All the same, he thought some time away might be good - if not for him and El, then for him and Neal. A few days where they weren’t having to see each other all the time might help a lot. Maybe when he got back, it would all feel a bit more bearable. And if it didn’t, he thought, it might be time to start seeing about transferring Neal to another office. Boston, maybe, or Chicago. Even San Diego - that office was surprisingly active, and they had a strong White Collar division. The sunshine might be good for Neal, and Peter knew the SAIC out there. But whether Agent Stokes would be willing to take a risk on Neal was another matter altogether - indeed, whether any agent would be willing. Peter knew that anyone looking at Neal would see the black marks on Peter’s own record in addition to their astronomical closure rate and have to weigh the two against each other.

Neal would probably hate him for transferring him out of New York, if it came down to that. But they couldn’t go on like this indefinitely, and the only other option was sending him back to prison. Which was no option at all, in Peter’s mind.

“What are you thinking?” El asked after a moment. 

“Nothing,” Peter lied easily. “Just that it’s time for lunch. You hungry?”

“Sure,” El said, her smile this time just a little less forced. Peter paused to kiss her on his way inside, and it grew more genuine still. They’d be okay, he thought, with a relief so profound that it surprised him. He hadn’t even realized how worried he’d been about that. 

***

Monday morning dawned far too bright and early. Neal had tossed and turned for most of the night. He was almost used to dealing with a near-constant sleep deprivation headache these days, but this morning’s seemed worse than usual. He dragged himself out of bed, drank a cup of coffee, and swallowed a double dose of ibuprofen in lieu of breakfast. He ached in a way that was new, too, and his brain felt extra fuzzy. It was going to be a long day. But it wasn’t like it was the first long day he’d had recently. 

There was a Danish and a latte waiting for him on his desk, as usual. Usually Neal was able to pick at the pastry over the course of the morning, but today just looking at it made his stomach turn. Fortunately, both Diana and Jones were up in Peter’s office with him, and so neither of them noticed when Neal gave it to one of the probies. The latte, he kept. At least it had milk in it. He probably needed it with all the painkillers he’d been downing.

The weekly team meeting was unusually miserable. No one seemed to expect Neal to contribute much, which was good, because he was barely able to follow what other people were saying, much less formulate intelligent points of his own. But at the end, right before he dismissed everyone, Peter asked for their attention. Neal forced himself to sit up and look as alert as he could. 

“Agent Barrigan and I are going to be away from Wednesday through Friday of this week,” Peter said. “I’m likely to be unavailable for much of that time. Agent Jones will be in charge, and all questions should be directed to him. That’s all, thank you. Neal, can I see you in my office?”

This time, Neal didn’t wait more than three or four minutes for Peter. To his surprise, Peter shut his office door behind him; Neal thought it was probably the first time in three weeks that they’d been in a room alone together, much less with the door shut. 

“So,” Neal said, deciding to take a stab at normality, “what’s taking you and Diana out of town? A case?”

Peter shook his head, seating himself behind the desk. “We have to give depositions in the Pratt investigation. In D.C.”

Neal grimaced. “Sounds like fun.”

“A barrell of laughs, I’m sure,” Peter said dryly. “Jones will be your temporary handler.” Neal nodded. “But that isn’t why I wanted to talk.”

“Oh?” Neal said, because Peter seemed to expect some sort of response. 

Peter took a deep breath. “First of all, I’m sorry about Friday night. With the text. I put you in a tough position, and it wasn’t fair of me. It won’t happen again.” Neal nodded, a little wary. “Secondly . . .” Peter hesitated. “Neal, have you thought about seeing a doctor?”

“A doctor?” Neal said. “No, why would I?”

“Because you look like hell,” Peter said flatly. 

“Gee, thanks, Peter.”

“I’m serious. You don’t look well. And you look even less well today than you did last week. I’m worried about you, all right?”

Neal sighed. “You shouldn’t be.”

“Stop saying that,” Peter said, an angry edge to his voice. “I damn well _should_ be worried. You looked like you were barely upright in that meeting just now. Are you sleeping or eating at all?”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Neal replied, because it was easier than answering Peter’s questions. “You’re the one who told Jones and Diana to get lunch with me every day.”

“And they tell me that you pick at your food and usually end up taking three-quarters of it to go.”

Neal shrugged. “I eat it later.”

“Do you?”

“When I feel like it.” Which was almost never. 

Peter sighed, rubbing a thumb between his brows. “Please see a doctor, all right? A _real_ doctor,” he added. “Not some herbalist Mozzie turns up.”

Neal shrugged. “If you insist,” he said, knowing that there wasn’t much Peter could do to make him go if he didn’t want to. Before, Peter might have taken him himself, but he couldn’t see that happening now. “Is there anything else?”

Peter opened his mouth, looked at him, and then shook his head, resignedly. “No, you can go.”

The upside to feeling so terrible physically, Neal discovered over the next couple of days, was that it left him little energy to feel terrible emotionally. He had to focus so much on just getting through the day that he didn’t have the energy left to think about anything else. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, wakeful and restless, he thought about Peter and El, torturing himself a little by fantasizing about being in their bed, between them, their breathing lulling him to sleep. But at work he was occupied by trying to look well and contribute to the team’s current cases, even in small ways, so that Peter wouldn’t remember to ask if he’d been to the doctor yet. 

He’d have never gotten away with it for so long before, Neal knew. If Peter hadn’t remembered, Elizabeth definitely would have. One of them would have noticed he wasn’t getting better. But Peter didn’t even say good-bye before he left on Tuesday evening. 

Diana did, though. She stopped by Neal’s desk on her way out and told him not to give Jones a hard time. 

Neal tried to dredge up a smile from somewhere. But he’d been feeling sick to his stomach, on the verge of puking, ever since he’d forced himself to finish his soup at lunch. He gave it up for lost and shrugged. “I won’t.”

Diana sighed. “I believe you,” she said, sounding almost sad about it. 

“Good luck in D.C.”

She grimaced. “Thanks. I think we might need it.” She looked at him closely for another moment or two, and then said simply, “Take care of yourself, Caffrey” and left.

That evening, Mozzie showed up for the first time in four days. Neal was lying on the sofa when he came in without knocking, as per usual, and he didn’t bother getting up. He wasn’t sure he could have managed it without falling over, anyway. He’d vomited when he got home, and now he just felt like hell. Maybe there was something really wrong with him, he thought for the first time. He’d been chalking it all up to stress, but maybe he was coming down with something. 

Moz took one look at him and shook his head. He poured himself a large glass of wine, from a bottle Neal had uncorked over the weekend and not finished, and then pulled a chair up close to the sofa. He didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat, and Neal was grateful, so grateful, for his silent support. 

At last, when his glass was empty, Moz drew a deep breath. “We could be gone by tomorrow, you know.”

Neal closed his eyes. “No, we couldn’t.”

“Okay, maybe not by tomorrow. But definitely by the end of the week.”

Neal thought about it. Peter was out of town. Probably if he wanted to run, this was the best time to do it. Except for the fact that the idea was _exhausting_. 

He shook his head. “But thanks, Moz.”

Moz sighed. “Well, if you ever change your mind.”

“I won’t. But thanks.”

Moz left. Neal knew he should get up and put himself to bed, but it seemed like far too much work when the couch was comfortable enough. He closed his eyes and fell asleep. 

He slept the whole night through for the first time in ages. But far from waking refreshed and invigorated, he woke on Wednesday morning feeling like he’d been run over by a semi. He was chilled all the way through in a way that he knew meant he was running a fever, and he felt almost too weak to sit up, much less get dressed and go to work. But he didn’t want to call in sick and make anyone think that he was taking advantage of Peter being out of town to malinger, so he did. Slowly, giving himself time to adjust to each new level of altitude until the room stopped spinning. 

He dressed in layers, a turtleneck sweater under his usual suit jacket, and a scarf around his neck, though it wasn’t really cold enough for one. Coffee would be a terrible idea, he sensed, so instead he swallowed two ibuprofen with water, standing at the sink in his kitchenette. Even those were hard to get down, and for a moment he was afraid he’d throw them up. He leaned over the sink, breathing through his nose to try and quell the nausea, until at last his stomach acquiesced. 

He caught a cab to work because he just couldn’t bear the thought of the subway, and arrived almost on time. Not that it mattered, since Peter wasn’t there to notice. He sat down at his desk and randomly pulled out a couple of cases to look through. His head ached too badly for him to be able to concentrate, but if he didn’t at least maintain the illusion of work, someone would find him something to do, and that wouldn’t go well for anyone. 

Somehow, he managed to get through the morning without falling asleep at his desk or having to slip off to be sick in the men’s room. He paged slowly through case files without registering a thing, sipping steadily at tea to try and keep the cough he felt tickling his throat at bay. At lunchtime, Jones was clearly too busy to make him go anywhere, and Neal didn’t feel like he could eat anyway; he thought about going out to the Duane Reade’s on the corner for some cough drops, but that felt like an unthinkably long trek. He made himself another mug of tea and stayed where he was. 

It was mid-afternoon before anyone really paid attention to him. He was just about to start fake-reading another file when one of the probies jogged down the stairs to let him know that Jones wanted him in the conference room. Neal took a deep breath to try to pull himself together and stood, pushing himself up from his chair with both hands flat on his desk. 

The room spun. Not that there was anything unusual about that for Neal these days, but this time, it wouldn’t stop spinning. Neal swallowed and tried to straighten, but that only made it worse. “Neal?” he heard someone say. “You all right?”

He couldn’t answer. There were black spots swimming in front of his eyes now. His knees felt weak and then they gave out altogether. He managed to catch himself on the edge of the desk, but the spinning wouldn’t stop and now there was a terrible ringing in his ears. Then his vision whited out. 

The next thing Neal was aware of, he was lying on the floor next to his desk, someone’s jacket bunched under his head and his feet up on a chair. He felt awful, weak and covered in a cold sweat. Jones was crouched next to him, and Neal was aware that everyone else in the office was standing around, staring. “Hey, Neal,” Jones said, when Neal blinked up at him. “You with us?”

“Yeah,” Neal managed. “Think so.”

“Agent Jones?” one of the probies said. Neal couldn’t see her. “Should I have them send the ambulance?”

“No,” Neal said, vehemently. “No, I’m okay, I’m -” He tried to sit up and felt a strange and highly unnerving tingling in all his extremities. He slipped back down, hating how weak he was. This was humiliating. “I’m okay,” he finished, weakly. 

Jones gave him a highly skeptical look, then turned to the probie and said, “No, Harris, tell them we’re okay. He’s conscious again, I think we can get him to the ER on our own.”

Neal thought about arguing that he didn’t need to go to the ER, but considering his current position, decided he was probably lucky not to be getting the ambulance. Jones told everyone go back to work, and then helped Neal sit up - slowly this time. He managed to lean against the desk. Jones produced a can of Sprite, as if by magic. Neal took a few small sips and felt a little better, though not quite capable of standing. 

“Sorry about this,” he muttered.

Jones sighed. “You had to wait until Peter and Diana were both out of the office, didn’t you?” 

Neal shrugged. “If you want to just send me home -”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Jones said, uncharacteristically serious. “Listen, I’m swamped this afternoon, but I’m going to have someone drive you to the ER.”

Neal sighed. “I’m pretty sure I have the flu.”

“I’m pretty sure you do, too,” Jones said, “but I’m also pretty sure you haven’t been eating or sleeping enough lately. It’s time to do something about that.”

Neal knew he was right. He supposed it was almost inevitable that he’d gotten sick eventually, considering how little he’d been doing to take care of himself - how little he’d _cared_ about taking care of himself. 

It was, of course, the newest probie, Klein, who got stuck with the task of driving Neal to Lennox Hill. Neal didn’t know the kid very well yet, but he seemed to resent the chauffeur duty; Neal didn’t really blame him, but he also didn’t feel up to trying to charm him, so neither of them said much in the car. Neal tried not to fall asleep in the passenger seat, but it was hard; his body seemed to be trying to knock him out, and considering how miserable he felt, Neal was having a hard time finding the motivation to fight it. 

Klein accompanied Neal inside, as Jones had told him to, and waited until he’d spoken to the nurse and gotten the paperwork to fill out. But he was clearly itching to get back to the office. Looking around, Neal thought it might be hours before he was actually seen. “You can head back,” Neal told Klein as he found a seat a reasonable distance from the nearest crying child to fill out his paperwork.

Klein looked torn. “Agent Jones said -”

“For you to stay until I got checked in,” Neal said. “And you have.”

“I guess that’s true,” Klein said, looking relieved. “Well, feel better.”

“Thanks,” Neal said, but Klein was already halfway out the door. Neal sighed, turning back to his paperwork. It had been a long time, he realized, since he’d filled it out himself. The handful of times he’d ended up in the emergency room in the last few years, Peter had been with him. He and Peter knew each other’s information almost as well as they knew their own by now. It was different being here alone, without Peter to lean against while they waited. But Neal supposed he should get used to it. 

Neal turned the paperwork in to the nurse at the front desk and then went back to his seat. He pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders, trying to ward off the chills that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and settled in to wait. 

He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, a nurse was gently shaking him awake. “Are you Mr. Caffrey?” she asked, when Neal blinked at her. 

“Yeah,” he said, groggily. 

“We’re ready to take you back. Can you come with me, please?”

Neal nodded and stood. Or tried to stand; his head swam and his knees buckled, and then he suddenly found himself back in his chair, with his head resting on his knees and the nurse’s hand warm on the back on his neck. As humiliating as the entire situation was, all Neal could think at first was that it was the first time anyone had touched him since the day he’d gone to the Burkes’ house, three and a half weeks ago now, and it felt so good. Neal swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat. 

“Mr. Caffrey, are you going to be sick?” the nurse asked. 

Neal shook his head. After a moment or two, he felt okay enough to sit up again, slowly. An orderly appeared with a wheelchair and helped Neal transfer into it, then wheeled him into the back, where he helped him transfer onto a narrow hospital bed. Neal felt better once he was lying down, even if the harsh lighting made his headache worse. 

The nurse took his vitals and then left him alone. Neal loosened his tie and kicked off his shoes, then lay back under the blankets and closed his eyes. The ER wasn’t exactly the quiet, dark room he longed for, but he was starting to wonder if there was something worse wrong with him than just the flu. Even though he could have left, he didn’t. Peter had been right. He needed to see a doctor. 

He wanted Peter and Elizabeth so badly in that moment that it hurt. He wanted Peter’s strength and El’s warmth, and he wanted the way they had always made him feel cared for and loved. But that was gone, and it was never coming back. He’d wrecked it, not because of anything he’d done, but just because of who he was. 

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he was sick enough that his self-control was shredded. He turned and pressed his flushed face into the coolness of his pillow and wished he was someone else, someone better.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter had to leave at a truly ungodly hour for D.C. on Wednesday morning. El was an early riser, but since there was nowhere she had to be until ten, she went back to sleep after he left. When she woke again, it was just after seven. She lay in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, and thought about Peter, who would be halfway to Washington by now. Then, involuntarily, she thought about Neal. 

He was probably getting dressed at June’s: putting on his suit, his tie, his cufflinks. His armor, she’d called it once, and he’d looked at her, startled, as though no one else had ever figured it out. Maybe no one else ever had. 

She sighed and rolled over, burying her head in her pillow. This was such a mess. She hadn’t even known what sort of mess she was making when she’d called things off, she’d only known that she could barely even look at Neal, much less be with him. But this wasn’t really any better, she thought. Peter could barely look at _her_ some days, and she didn’t know what to tell him. He never blamed her aloud, not really, but she also knew that he didn’t really understand how she felt. 

_Just say the word_ , Peter had said, laying it all on her. Say the word and put an end to both their miseries. As though this were that easy. As though this wasn’t about _two years_ of accumulated strain, about an anxiety that had become so constant it was almost normal, about waking up in the middle of the night, wondering when the next crisis would hit. She’d known what it meant to be the wife of an FBI agent, but that was one of the advantages of White Collar. It wasn’t the most glamorous division, but it was, for the most part, _safe_. Or it had been. 

It was unfair, she knew, to blame Neal for all of it. She’d told him once, when the three of them were first starting out, that there was no way for him to break the relationship she and Peter had; they were too strong for that. But it seemed he had changed them in ways that El hadn’t really understood until she’d tried to change them back. They’d all changed, and her wish to go back to how things were before Neal had ever walked into their lives was both futile and selfish. She’d been afraid, deeply afraid, while Peter was in prison, and even after he’d gotten out, she’d felt shaken, the foundations of her world rattled. And now . . . now El worried that _she_ had broken them. Irreparably.

Part of her was still afraid. Peter hadn’t said much about this deposition, but she knew enough to worry that it might damage him somehow. But freezing Neal out of their lives wasn’t helping with that. And as Peter had pointed out, astutely, it wasn’t making her feel better. 

It had been almost a month since she’d seen Neal. She’d thought he might have come to the barbecue, but he hadn’t. Her feelings about that had been mixed, to say the least. Mostly, she’d been relieved, but there was a small part of her that had been disappointed. Still, she hadn’t called him, and she knew that he would never call her. It had been the same while Peter was in prison; she’d refused to reach out, knowing that he never would. Not speaking to him had made it easy to stay angry, to put the blame for everything that had gone wrong onto him, as well as the onus of fixing it. 

Deep down, she’d known she was being irrational, but it had taken Peter being so unhappy for her to see it. The question now was what she was going to do about it. The reasonable thing to do, she thought, would be to call Neal and ask to see him, preferably before Peter came back on Friday. But she had no idea what she would say to him if she did see him.

El sighed deeply, rolling over. She caught sight of the clock and startled, then sat up and threw back the covers. She’d have to figure it out later, if she wanted to avoid being late for her ten o’clock meeting. 

She managed to put everything out of her mind for most of the day. She had client meetings until one, and then a business lunch with one of her vendors. It was mid-afternoon by the time she was able to make it back to the office, and then there were two minor crises to deal with. At four o’clock, she was finally able to sit down in front of her computer with her office door closed to catch up on email and return messages. 

She’d only been at it for about twenty minutes when her cell phone rang. “Elizabeth Burke speaking,” she answered, absently trying to finish up the email she’d been writing.

“Hi, Mrs. Burke. This is Clinton Jones.”

Just like that, the anxiety she’d been ignoring as a mere background hum returned full force. Past experience told her that if something terrible had happened to Peter, the Bureau would send an agent to tell her in person, but that didn’t seem to matter to the back of her brain. “Clinton,” she managed, hoping her voice didn’t shake. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Don’t worry, everything’s fine with Peter, as far as I know. I’m actually calling about Neal.”

To Elizabeth’s surprise, the anxiety didn’t diminish. She tried to keep her tone concerned but casual. Jones presumably had no idea what was going on, after all. “Is he all right?”

“Not really,” Jones said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen him recently, but he’s been sort of under the weather, and, well, he collapsed in the office earlier this afternoon. He’s okay,” he added quickly, “or he seemed okay when he woke up. Coherent and everything, at least.”

“People who are okay don’t usually pass out,” Elizabeth pointed out. She frowned, remembering Peter confessing to her how worried he was about Neal.

“No, which is why I had one of the probies take him to the ER at Lennox Hill. I would’ve taken him myself, but I’m swamped here with Peter and Diana in D.C. That’s actually why I was calling - I was hoping you might be able to go keep him company. I don’t like the idea of him being there by himself, you know?”

Elizabeth didn’t like the idea, either. Peter would like it even less when he found out. “Yes, of course,” she said, slowly. “Lennox Hill, you said?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Mrs. Burke. Tell Neal I hope he feels better.”

“I will,” El said, and hung up. Then she sat in her chair for a moment, just breathing deeply. Ready or not, it seemed she was going to see Neal - _if_ he wanted to see her, she thought, and wondered if he would. 

The first thing she did was try to call Peter. His phone rolled straight to voicemail - no help there. Truthfully, El wasn’t sure what she’d have wanted him to say to her, anyway. Mind made up, she grabbed her purse and let Yvonne know that she’d had a personal emergency come up that she needed to take care of. Then she slipped her tablet into her purse in case she got the chance to do some work and left the office. 

She still had no idea what she’d say to Neal, she realized in the slow cab ride to the hospital. _I miss you_ and _I love you_ were both true. She did miss Neal, and she’d never stopped loving him, even when she was drowning in anxiety and fear for Peter. That had never been the issue. As for what _had_ been the issue, nothing had changed. Or had it? She found she was less sure than she had been, about everything. 

_Hello_ , she decided at last. That was probably as good a place to start as any. 

She asked about Neal at the front desk of the ER. The nurse took her name and told her to take a seat, promising that someone would be out to get her if Mr. Caffrey agreed to it. El sat down and waited, tapping her foot nervously. When no one appeared immediately, she slipped her tablet out of her purse, checked her email, and started reviewing menu options for the Rickerson-Michaels wedding. 

Twenty minutes went by before she heard someone call her name. “Yes, that’s me,” she said, pulling the cover over her tablet and slipping it back in her purse. She half-expected the nurse to say that Neal would prefer not to see her, but instead he gestured her through the door. Neal had a curtained-off cubicle toward the back; the nurse tugged the curtain aside and left. Elizabeth took a deep breath and ducked through. 

Everything El had thought she might say to Neal went right out of her head. He was as white as the pillowcase on which his head rested, with dark smudges under his eyes. He was also thinner than he had been when she’d last seen him, and he’d been too thin then. He was still in his clothes, no hospital gown, but he had an IV running into the crook of one arm. 

She wanted to hug him, but everything about the set of his shoulders, the jut of his chin, the way his eyes cut away from hers told her not to. 

“Hi Elizabeth,” he said, voice rough. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t seem to help. “I thought they must’ve had the wrong name when they told me you were here.”

She set her purse down on the floor and seated herself in the bedside chair. “Jones called me,” she said. “He felt bad that you were on your own.”

Neal shrugged. “It’s fine.” He looked at her, then, but still didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t feel you have to stay.”

El hesitated. “I want to if you want me to,” she said last. “But be honest - if you’d rather I go, please say so.”

It took Neal a moment to answer. Finally, he shook his head, and El relaxed a little. “So, what did the doctor say?” she asked, folding her coat across her lap. 

“She said I have the flu,” Neal said with a sigh. “And also that my blood sugar and blood pressure are both low, I’m dehydrated and underweight, and that I’m exhausted. And judging by some of the questions the last person who came in was asking, they also seem to think I might be depressed.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said, startled by his honesty. And slightly alarmed, too; it was unlike Neal to be so forthright. “Are you?”

Neal didn’t answer immediately. “It’s been rough lately,” he said at last. “I’m tired a lot, and food stopped tasting like anything even when I felt well enough to eat it. Probably some of that was the incipient ulcer,” he added, apparently as an afterthought. “It seems that a diet of painkillers, coffee, and wine isn’t really medically advisable.”

El didn’t know what to say to that. “Peter said he was worried about you,” she ventured at last. “But I didn’t realize . . .” 

Neal shrugged. “Neither did I, I guess.”

Silence fell. El wanted to reach for Neal’s hand but didn’t know if it’d be welcome. There were words on the tip of her tongue; she hadn’t said them yet, not even to Peter. She’d refused to say them, in fact, since they implied a measure of guilt, or at least responsibility, that she hadn’t wanted to assume. But looking at Neal, she could not help but think, _I did this_. It might not have been true, or not entirely true, but she felt it in her gut. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

He opened his eyes, startled. “What? El, no -”

“Yes,” she said, more firmly. She sat up straighter. “I’m sorry, Neal. I am.”

He shook his head. “You had every right.”

“I did,” she agreed, “but I’m still sorry. I’m sorry that my decision hurt you so badly. I love you, and I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

Neal swallowed, his eyes bright. “Thanks,” he murmured, eyes trained on his hand as it picked at fuzz on the hospital blanket. “But you were right. What happened to Peter, happened because of me. It wasn’t anything I did, it was just . . . me. Who I am.”

El winced. “Sweetie, I don’t actually believe that.”

Neal looked away. “I do. Kate, Mozzie, Ellen, you, Peter - it’s all starting to feel like a pattern.”

El didn’t like where this was going. “That isn’t - Neal, you can’t think that way.”

He looked back at her. “It’s your own argument, El. _Shit happens to you, Neal, and it’s the people standing next to you who get hurt._ You were right to break things off with me. Maybe if Peter isn’t standing quite so close to me next time, he won’t get hurt.”

El didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t deny that those were her words Neal had just thrown at her, and she wasn’t even sure she could deny the truth of the statement. But it hurt her to see Neal hurting so badly. She should never have let it get to this point, she thought. If only she hadn’t frozen Neal out while Peter was in prison, if only they had _been there_ for each other, as Peter had so clearly wanted. Maybe then everything would be different. 

“I shouldn’t have said that to you,” she said at last. Neal shook his head. “No, listen to me, Neal. These past couple of months -” She stopped and looked away, then drew a deep breath and looked back at him. “Since the car accident, Neal, I’ve been more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve been so scared for Peter. And being that scared made me angry, and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t fair.” 

Neal met her eyes steadily. “Which doesn’t mean you weren’t also right.”

El didn’t answer for a moment. Finally she said, “I think you’re too sick right now for us to be having this conversation. I came because I care about you, and I didn’t want you to be alone. Not to hash all this out while you can barely hold your head up. All right?” Neal nodded, picking at the blanket again. “Now, did they say anything about discharging you?”

Neal grimaced. “They said they wanted the IV to finish, but the doctor was talking about admitting me because there was no one at home to keep an eye on me.”

“June’s not around?”

“Visiting her daughter. Don’t know where Moz is.” Neal shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“It is _not_ fine,” El said, before she could stop herself. “I’m not going to leave you in the hospital, Neal.”

“What’s the alternative?” Neal sighed, letting his head fall back to rest against the pillow. He swallowed and winced, as though it hurt. “You going to take me back to the house? I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

“Well, I suppose I could come and stay at your place,” El said, “but I’d have to bring Satch.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” El replied. She hesitated, then very deliberately reached over and put her hand on top of Neal’s. He visibly startled, then looked at her with wide eyes. “Come back to the house with me, Neal. Please. If only to spare me having to explain to Peter why I left you sitting in a hospital.”

Neal hesitated. But after a moment he nodded, slowly. El squeezed his hand. “Good.”

There didn’t seem to be much left to say, but Neal didn’t pull his hand away and El didn’t let go. After a few minutes, his eyes drifted shut and his breathing evened out. El waited to make sure he was really and truly asleep, and then she took her cell phone and went out into the hallway. 

It was after six now. Hopefully Peter would be done for the day. His phone rang this time, rather than going straight to voicemail. He picked up with a weary, “Hi, hon.”

“Hi, hon,” she said, smiling. “How did it go?”

“About as well as could be expected. I’m waiting for Diana - we’re going to go get a beer.”

“I bet you both need it.”

“Definitely. And we get to do it again tomorrow. How about you, how was your day?”

“My day was interesting,” El said, and told him, briefly, about what had happened since Jones had called her that afternoon. “So I guess he’ll be staying out at the house until he feels better,” she finished up at last. 

Peter was quiet. “And you’re all right with this?” 

“I’m going to be. I can’t leave him here, Peter. And,” she hesitated, “I’ve been thinking. About everything.”

“What does that mean?” Peter asked, carefully.

She bit her lip. She didn’t want to get his hopes up and then have it come to nothing. “I don’t know yet. It just means that I’m thinking.”

“I understand,” Peter said, then sighed. “I wish I was there.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think maybe this is something Neal and I have to do on our own.” They’d failed at it the first time, when Peter was inside; failed to take care of each other, look after each other, and El knew that a lot of that was on her. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice if she could help it. “But you should call Neal,” she added. “Not right now, he’s sleeping. But maybe after you get back from your beer with Diana.”

“I’ll do that, thanks, El. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” 

El hung up. Then she stood in the hallway with the phone pressed to her chest, gathering herself. She didn’t feel ready for this, not by a long shot. But she would be. 

***

Neal woke the next morning in Peter and Elizabeth’s guest room, sunshine slanting through the window. He felt marginally less awful than he had the day before - as though he had a bad case of the flu, rather than as though he was about to keel over and expire. He winced, recalling the day before; much of it was a merciful blur, but collapsing in front of the entire office was, unfortunately, crystal clear. 

So was arriving back at the house. He’d dozed through most of the drive, but once they’d arrived he’d been hyper-aware of El holding his arm, guiding him up the steps to the front door. She’d shooed Satchmo away and then led him upstairs. 

At the top of the staircase, they’d paused. Neal hadn’t quite been able to stop himself from glancing at the master bedroom’s door, which hung half open. But El had opened the door to the guest room, unused for months now, and turned on the light. “I think the bed is already made up,” she said, briskly, “but let’s check.”

He’d still had pajamas at the house from the last time he’d stayed over, months ago now. He changed into them and crawled beneath the clean, cool sheets of the guest bed. It was not the same as sleeping in Peter and Elizabeth’s bed; the mattress was harder and the sheets didn’t smell like them. But it was so much closer than he’d been to them in ages, he almost didn’t care. 

It was more hope than Neal had had in weeks. But with hope, Neal realized, came fear, and the danger of disappointment. El was being kind to him, he reminded himself as he watched her put fresh pillow cases on the guest bed pillows, but that didn’t mean anything. El was kind to everyone. She’d been kind to him when he was just the conman her husband had been chasing. Her kindness didn’t actually change anything, as far as Neal could see. And even if it did, he wasn’t at all sure that it should.

After she’d seen him settled, El had shut the door and gone back downstairs. Neal was alone for only a minute or two when his cell phone rang. _Peter Burke_ , the screen informed him. Neal answered. “Peter?”

“Hey, Neal,” Peter said, warmly. He sounded tired. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not so great,” Neal admitted. He winced. “I passed out in the bullpen.”

“I heard. But you’re doing better?”

“Yeah. They gave me fluids and stuff at the hospital. Did you know - El brought me home, Peter,” Neal said, unable to keep the bewilderment out of his voice. “To _your_ home.”

“I know, buddy. She said she was going to do that.”

Of course Peter and El had talked. Neal frowned. “I thought she didn’t want to see me.” Possibly ever again. 

Peter was silent. “Some things trump everything else,” he said at last. “When you love someone, you don’t walk away from them when they need you, no matter how angry you are. It’s part of what love _is_.”

Neal didn’t know what to say to that. “Oh.”

“We failed you,” Peter said, in a soft, firm voice. “ _I_ failed you. We should have seen this coming and done something about it before you ended up in the hospital.”

“You did try,” Neal pointed out. 

“Not hard enough. I told you to go see a doctor when I should have taken you myself. And I’m sorry for that, Neal.”

“It’s okay,” Neal said, unsure how else to respond. 

Peter apparently decided not to argue with him. He stifled a yawn. “I should get some sleep, early day tomorrow. And you should, too. I probably won’t be available until after six, but we’ll talk then.”

“We will?”

“Yeah, Neal,” Peter said, gently. “We will. Good night.”

“Good night,” Neal said, and hung up. The doctor had prescribed him something to help him sleep, but after talking to Peter, Neal felt a part of him that had been restless and anxious for almost two months suddenly calm. Sometimes, very occasionally and almost always right after sex, Peter would press his lips to Neal’s forehead. It had always made Neal feel centered, grounded, and that was how he had felt after talking to Peter. Falling asleep had been no trouble at all after that. 

It was after eight o’clock now, Neal saw, catching sight of the bedside clock. He’d slept for over ten hours. He worked his way up to a sitting position cautiously, but his head only swam a little, and he got to his feet without incident. 

Shuffling into the bathroom was enough of an effort that he had to sit down to pee. Showering was out of the question, but he splashed some water on his face and brushed his teeth with the fresh toothbrush El had left out for him. In the hallway, he gave serious consideration to going back to bed. But he could hear El moving around downstairs, and he suspected that if he didn’t put in an appearance, she’d bring a tray up to him. Under other circumstances, Neal would’ve let her pamper him a little, even enjoyed it. But not now. He braved the stairs - carefully, with lots of help from the railing.

“Good morning,” El said, when he came into the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have gotten up, I was going to bring you some toast.”

Neal shook his head and tried not to lean too obviously on the kitchen island. “Not your job to wait on me,” he said, hoarsely. He cleared his throat without much hope that it would help. “I feel much better today. I’m sure I’d be okay at June’s.”

El gave him the sort of wry look, tinged with affection, that he hadn’t received from her since before Peter’s car accident. “I don’t think so, but you get points for trying. Go lie down on the sofa, and I’ll bring you your breakfast.”

Neal thought about arguing, but he was starting to feel lightheaded. He stumbled into the living room and lay down gratefully on the sofa. There was a hand-knit afghan, probably courtesy of El’s mom, draped over the back. He pulled it over himself and tried not to huddle into it too obviously. 

A minute or two later, El emerged from the kitchen with a tray. She set it down on the coffee table, and Neal sat up, eyeing its contents without enthusiasm. There was a cup for coffee for El and mug of still steeping tea for him, a plate of buttered toast, a little dish of what looked like homemade preserves, and a small bowl of fruit salad with yogurt. And a tiny vase with a single flower. 

“Ellen used to do that for me,” Neal said, looking at the little vase. “Whenever I stayed home sick from school.”

“My mom did it for me,” El said. “Must be a mom thing.”

“I guess.” Neal grimaced. “I’m not sure I can eat.”

“You can eat a piece of toast,” El said, implacable. “Even if you don’t eat anything else, I want you to eat a piece of toast.” Neal sighed, but El just shook her head. “If you don’t eat, we’re going to end up right back the hospital again, and they’ll have to give you nutrients via an IV. Is that really what you want?”

“No,” Neal conceded, and picked up a piece of toast. El took the second one, spreading some of the jam over it, and for a couple minutes there was only the sound of chewing. Once he started, Neal found it was easier to keep eating. His stomach accepted the toast, and he even had a few bites of fruit and yogurt before turning to the tea - chamomile, with honey. Neal breathed it in deeply for a moment and admitted to himself that he was glad, very glad, not to be in the hospital. “Thank you,” he said aloud. “Not just for breakfast, I mean, for - for all of it. You didn’t have to.”

El sipped her cup of coffee and leaned back in the armchair. “I know I didn’t. I wanted to.”

Neal looked at her. “Really?”

She nodded. “Here’s how today is going to go,” she said. “I’m going to work from home until after lunch. You’re going to rest. And tonight, after I get home, if you’re up to it, we’ll talk.” 

Neal didn’t know what to say to that, so in the end he just nodded, trying to damp down the small spark of optimism that suddenly sputtered in his chest. _We’ll talk_ could mean anything, after all.

El cleared away the breakfast things, and Neal went back upstairs to the guest room. His little field trip had exhausted him, and it took him almost no time at all to fall asleep again. He woke once, briefly, when El made him sit up to drink a glass of orange juice and take two Tylenol, barely opening his eyes before falling back to sleep again.

The next time, he was woken by the dip of the mattress when someone sat beside him on the bed. _Peter or El_ , he knew, even in his foggy state. He sighed and rolled over, curling toward them. Then he felt a hand on his forehead, checking his fever and smoothing his hair back, and caught the faint scent of El’s perfume. 

“El,” he murmured, turning his head to nuzzle her wrist. Her fingers slid into his hair, her nails scratching lightly against his scalp, just the way he liked. He sighed. 

“Neal,” he heard her say, “can you sit up and eat something? I need to leave soon.”

He opened his eyes and for a moment, he was entirely disoriented. He wasn’t in the master bedroom, in Peter and Elizabeth’s bed. He was in the guest room. And then, in a rush, he remembered why. 

He jerked his head away from El’s hand. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, breathlessly. 

She bit her lip. “It’s okay. Can you sit up?”

“Yeah.” Neal sat up, not looking at her as she placed the tray over his lap. Chicken soup, with a slice of toasted honey-wheat bread and more chamomile tea. “I wasn’t really awake,” he muttered, picking up his spoon. 

“I know,” El said, gently. “It’s okay, Neal.” 

Neal expected her to leave, but she didn’t. She was dressed for work, he saw, when he finally forced himself to look at her, in one of the business suits she favored for client meetings. “How’ve things been at work?” he asked, in between spoonfuls of soup. 

“Okay,” she said with a shrug. “I’m lucky that Yvonne is as competent as she is, or I think I would’ve lost half my client base by now.”

Neal grimaced. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“Lucky for me, ‘Burke’ is a fairly common name,” she said, wryly. “And I’ve never advertised that I was married to an FBI agent.” She stood, smoothing her skirt. “I need to finish getting ready. Do you need anything else?”

Neal shook his head. “I can take the tray down later,” he said. 

She nodded. “I’ll see you this evening, then.” She left, closing the door quietly behind her. 

Neal finished the rest of the soup slowly, using the bread to soak it up. It was El’s homemade soup, probably out of the freezer, and it was the best thing Neal had had in weeks. He remembered the last time he’d had it, after he’d caught a bad cold from too many nights spent in a chilly surveillance van. El had sent some for him with Peter, who’d brought it to Neal at his apartment and then stayed for lunch, eating a sandwich while Neal had soup. Neal had been touched by their concern, and for at least a couple days he’d lived off of El’s soup until his health improved and other things started tasting right again. 

After El left, Neal took the tray downstairs, loaded the dishes into the dishwasher, and went to lie down on the sofa in front of the TV. Satchmo ambled over and lay down beside him. Neal found a rerun of _Friends_ to doze to and let his eyes close. 

He slept on and off all afternoon. At one point his phone buzzed with a text from El: _How does mac and cheese sound for dinner?_ Neal wrote back that it sounded fine, found a nature documentary instead of the _King of Queens_ episode that’d come on while he was asleep, and went back to sleep. Sleeping was easy, after all. It kept him from thinking about how the normality of this was entirely illusory, kept him from nursing the small kernel of hope El had planted in him.

Neal was vaguely aware when El arrived home, listening vaguely as Satchmo got up to greet her and she went into the kitchen. He kept his eyes closed, drifting, waking gradually to the sounds of her moving around, letting Satchmo out and back in, filling his bowl, putting the groceries away. Finally he opened his eyes with a sigh. He sat up, turned off the TV, and pushed a hand through his hair - futilely, he suspected. 

“Hey,” he said, padding into the kitchen in his bare feet.

“Hey,” El said, looking up from the block of cheese she was grating. “How are you?”

“Better,” Neal said, and realized it was true. His headache had lessened, along with some of the fuzziness in his head, and he didn’t ache as badly as he had that morning. “I guess sleeping all day was the thing to do. How was your day?”

“Not bad. Landed a new client.”

“That’s great,” Neal said with a smile.

“Thanks,” El said, looking pleased with herself. She finished grating the cheese and went to wash her hands. “I talked to Peter a bit ago. He called me while I was on the Bridge, said he and Diana were on their way to dinner, but he’d give you a call in a couple of hours.”

Neal nodded. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble,” he said. “Take-out would’ve been fine. Or more soup.”

El shook her head. “I never make mac and cheese anymore, with Peter’s cholesterol being what it is. You’re a good excuse.”

“Ah,” Neal said, sliding onto a stool at the island. “Well, happy to oblige.”

She smiled at him, quick but genuine. “Are you thirsty? I picked up some more orange juice.”

Neal suddenly realized he was parched. “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

El gave him his juice in a wine glass to match her own - which, of course, had actual wine in it - and then went back to making the roux for the the mac and cheese. Neal sat quietly at the kitchen island, sipping his juice and watching her, listening to the light jazz she had playing on her laptop.

At last Elizabeth put the mac and cheese in the oven and set the kitchen timer. She topped off her wine glass and came to sit beside him at the island. 

Neither of them spoke. Neal wondered if he should start but couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t an apology - and he didn’t think another one of those would help, tempting as it was. 

“So,” El said, just as Neal was starting to feel desperate. “We really fucked this up, didn’t we?”

Coming from El, the profanity was more startling than anything else. Neal looked at her, and she shrugged. “It’s true. Peter went away, and you and I fell apart.”

“Circumstances were . . . not good,” Neal pointed out, carefully. 

“Circumstances were terrible,” she agreed. “But I froze you out on purpose. I was scared, and I was angry, and instead of leaning on you, I made sure you wouldn’t come within a mile of anywhere you thought I’d be. And it worked.”

Neal wondered if he was imagining the faintly accusatory tone he’d heard in that last sentence. “You had every right to be angry. And you had every right to call an end to things with the three of us.”

El nodded, not denying any of that. “But what about your rights, Neal?”

Neal frowned. “My rights?”

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since the hospital,” she said. “Just because I had the right to do what I did, that doesn’t mean I was right to do it. But you let me. That morning, when I said I couldn’t do this anymore, you just . . . left. And I knew you would, too,” she added, turning her wine glass around in her hands. “I thought Peter might try and talk me down, but I knew you never would.”

Neal reached for his wine glass full of orange juice. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t get to have alcohol as a prop for this conversation, he thought. “I don’t have rights,” he said. “I’m a felon on a two mile radius, and I’m not married to either of you. You and Peter have rights when it comes to each other. I don’t. When you said you wanted out, I didn’t have any right to argue.”

El looked at him. “And also, you thought you deserved it.”

Neal ducked his head. “I wasn’t in a good headspace in the hospital,” he said, mostly to the tiled countertop. 

“I know you weren’t,” El said. “That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any truth to it.”

“Like I said,” Neal replied, still staring at the countertop. “It’s just all starting to feel like a pattern.” He lifted his head to look at her. “I can’t promise you that nothing in my past is going to come back to hurt you or Peter ever again.”

El sighed. “And I can’t promise that I won’t be angry if it does. I love the life I have. I don’t like being afraid that I’m going to lose it. But I’m sorry for the way I handled this, Neal. At the time it didn’t feel like I had any other choice, but it caused you and Peter a lot of pain, and that wasn’t what I wanted.”

Neal nodded. “Thank you,” he said quietly. 

“And I’m sorry, too,” El added, reaching to cover his hand with her own, “if we’ve made you feel as though you have no rights in this relationship.”

Neal shook his head. “That isn’t something you’ve made me feel. It’s just _true_. Anything that happens to us, you and Peter will still have each other, and I’ll have nothing.” His voice cracked on the last word and he turned away, covering his face with his hand. He heard El slide off her stool. She put her hand on his shoulder, turning him toward her, and slid her arms around him. Neal resisted for half a second and then folded, burying his face in her neck. He breathed raggedly for a moment. He barely had the words to describe how terrible the last few weeks had been, how much being shut out from the two of them had hurt. He wanted to know that it wouldn’t happen again, but she couldn’t promise him that any more than Neal could promise that nothing in his past would ever hurt her or Peter. 

To El’s credit, she didn’t try. She held Neal until he got himself under control, and then she looked at him. She put a hand on the side of his face, cupping it, and Neal leaned into her touch. “I don’t know what to do about that,” she said, “or even if there is anything we can do. And I understand if you’d rather not take a chance on us - on _me_ \- a second time. But if you’re in, so am I. And,” she took a deep breath, “I’m going to try to be better.” 

It was probably foolish to risk this sort of pain a second time. Moz would call him an idiot when he found out. But El was offering him a second chance, something Neal never thought he’d get, and he found that he couldn’t resist. “Me too,” he said, and hugged her. As promises for the future went, he thought, it wasn’t much; it was nothing like the promises he’d made Kate, once upon a time. But unlike those promises, he thought he might be able to keep this one.

***

D.C. to New York was a long drive when you were exhausted from three days of being grilled by people who clearly thought that, while you might not have committed the murder you’d been accused of, you’d sure as hell done _something_. Peter knew he probably should have stayed over until the morning, but he’d promised El he’d be back Friday night. She’d have understood if he’d told her he was too tired to make the drive safely, but he and Diana had done it together, taking turns behind the wheel of the Taurus, and they’d managed all right. He’d dropped her off at her place, and now the only thing that stood between him and his wife and his bed - and Neal, _Neal_ \- was finding a parking spot. 

He finally found one, a block and a half from the house, and trudged up the street with his overnight bag slung over his shoulder. He had his keys out, but El opened the door before he needed them. She was wearing her old terry cloth robe, the one with the hole in the sleeve, and cotton pajamas. Peter smiled. “Hey, hon.”

“Hey, hon,” she replied, giving him a small smile. “Welcome back.”

He dropped his bag on the floor of the foyer, then turned to hug her and kiss her hello. He held her close, pressing his face to her hair while she turned her face into his neck. At last they pulled away, just far enough to look at each other. 

“How was it?” she asked. 

He grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

El frowned in sudden worry. “Did they -”

He shook his head, forestalling her. “I think I’m fine. But it was really unpleasant, and I’d just rather not think about it, preferably for the rest of the weekend.” He looked at her closely. “How about you?” He’d talked to Neal the night before, but not for very long. He’d heard the cautious optimism in Neal’s voice, heard him say that he thought things might be all right, eventually, but he hadn’t wanted to let himself believe it until he saw it for himself. 

She nodded. “It’s been good.”

“Good?” Peter wasn’t sure what that meant.

She nodded again. “Hard sometimes, but . . . good. It’s going to take some time, Peter. And it might not ever be quite like it was.”

Peter had a hard time imagining that it could be. But maybe it _shouldn’t_ be. What they’d had before hadn’t held up in the face of real adversity. Eventually, this might become something even better. Something that might really endure. “I’m glad, El,” he said, holding her close again. “But I hope . . . I hope you didn’t do this just for Neal and me.” He’d worried about that ever since talking to her while Neal was in the ER.

El bit her lip. “I did it partly for you and Neal,” she admitted. “It was hard for me to see how much I’d hurt you. But not only for the two of you.” She sighed. “It was a lot easier to be angry with Neal when I wasn’t seeing or speaking to him at all. When I saw him at the ER . . . a lot of stuff suddenly mattered less.” She leaned against him, and he tightened his arms around her. “I’m scared, though,” she confessed, voice muffled against his chest. She moved her head slightly, and when she spoke again, it was clearer. “And I know Neal is, too. It seems like we’re risking a lot, trying again.”

Peter tilted her chin up, so she was look at him. “We’ll be better this time,” he promised her. “All of us.”

El smiled. “That’s what Neal and I promised each other.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “He’s upstairs,” she added, when she pulled away. “Sleeping, I think, but he said to make sure you knew to wake him up when you got home. I’ll take care of locking up down here.”

And give them a bit of privacy at the same time. Peter smiled at her, grateful, so grateful to have her. “Thanks, El.”

She kissed him again. “Thank me by not going anywhere for a while.”

“I’ll do my best,” Peter said. 

He went upstairs with his bag. Their bedroom was dark and quiet; Neal was asleep in the bed, curled on his side, breathing easily. Peter almost hated to wake him, but he thought Neal would be upset if he didn’t. He set his bag down in the armchair, deciding he’d unpack in the morning, and undressed without turning on a light, navigating by the streetlight filtering in through the window. Then, in his pajamas, he went and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

Neal stirred. “Mmm. Peter?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” He put his hand on Neal’s shoulder, just because he could. Then he moved it to the top of Neal’s head, sliding his fingers into the silky strands of Neal’s hair. With the other hand, he cupped Neal’s cheek, stroking his thumb over the arch. 

Neal closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. “Lie down with me,” he murmured.

Peter didn’t have to be asked twice. He went around to the other side of the bed and slid between the covers. Neal rolled over so he was facing him, and Peter wrapped his arms around him. It was impossible to ignore how thin he still was; Peter could have counted every one of his ribs. But he didn’t. Instead he kissed Neal, slowly, almost chastely, then buried his face in Neal’s neck and just held him, appreciating the weight of him in his arms “I missed you,” Peter mumbled.

“I missed you, too,” Neal said, shakily. “I didn’t think I’d ever have this again.”

Peter tightened his arms around Neal and kissed him again. This time, the spark caught; the kiss turned considerably less chaste, and Peter felt the thread of desire between them pull taut and _thrum_ with tension. Neal was clearly too tired for them to do anything, but that hardly mattered to Peter. It was a taste of what they would have again, soon, and for right now, that was enough. 

They kissed until a soft noise made Peter break it off and raise his head. El stood in the doorway, hand covering her mouth and tears staining her cheeks. “El,” he said, suddenly worried, but she shook her head. She shed her robe and came around to crawl in next to Peter, who unwrapped an arm from around Neal to draw her close. “You’re okay?” he asked her. 

“I’m better than okay,” El said, even though her voice cracked and her eyes were bright with tears. “I forgot,” she said, as though it were a confession. “I was so afraid, I forgot how much I loved this, how much I loved _us_. Seeing the two of you together, I suddenly remembered.”

Neal reached for her hand, across Peter’s chest. “I was pretty scared, too.”

“That makes three of us,” Peter said. 

The three of them were quiet. After a little while, El got up and left the room - to go to the bathroom, Peter guessed. When she came back, she pulled the curtains shut, blocking out the streetlight and making the room darker still. She slid back into bed, and the three of them fit themselves together carefully - more carefully than they ever had in the past, Peter thought, even at the beginning, when Neal had been unsure of his welcome. But they fit together nonetheless: El’s chest to Peter’s back, her arm draped across his waist to rest on Neal’s hip, Peter’s arm across Neal’s chest, anchoring him to the bed. Their legs tangled until Peter couldn’t say whose was whose, and he didn’t care. 

He picked El’s hand up and pressed a kiss to the back of it, then another kiss to the back of Neal’s neck. He closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of being cradled between them, held, encompassed. He closed his eyes and dropped effortlessly toward sleep. _Home at last._

_Fin._


End file.
